Charting Residential Stability and Race

I hate moving. It takes physical, mental, and emotional energy. It’s expensive to pay for security deposits, non-refundable pet deposits, first month’s rent and last month’s rent, and professional movers. From 2004 to 2012, I probably lived at 12 different addresses in Minnesota, California, and Scotland. I’m not sure if that qualified me as a transient, but it sure made it hard to fill out background check forms to get jobs. I’m happy to have stayed in an apartment for almost four years now, but sometimes the benefits of moving outweigh the costs. Also, moving is much easier for me (a married, childless middle-class white man who speaks English fluently and is expecting a master’s degree in a couple months) than it is for others.

I’m thinking of kids, specifically. A couple of child health specialists reviewed the academic literature and found that children who moved more than average experienced bad outcomes: “higher levels of behavioural and emotional problems; increased teenage pregnancy rates; accelerated initiation of illicit drug use; adolescent depression; reduced continuity of healthcare.” Thinking about the costs of moving (to both adults and children) made me wonder: Do people in the Twin Cities move more or less than people in other cities? Are there racial disparities in residential stability?

Methods

I took the 2014 five-year estimates from the American Community Survey (geographical mobility in the past year, by race) for the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., then visualized the data with Tableau. In this case, residential mobility means the percent of the population that had moved to a different home in the last twelve months. Residential stability means the percent of the population that lived in the same home they had been living in twelve months ago.

Maps, graphs, and results

Residential mobility varies a lot by region. People in northeastern and midwestern cities (which are usually older) don’t move very often. People in southern and western cities (which are usually newer) move more often. Minneapolis is sometimes called the first western city, and St. Paul the last eastern city, so they’re predictably in the middle of the pack.

Residential mobility varies a lot by race, too. Out of the 20 largest cities, in 18 cities the white population was least likely to have moved recently. Whites were edged out by the Hispanic/Latino population in Los Angeles and the Asian population in San Francisco.

The gaps in residential mobility by race varied from city to city. In Washington, DC, a black person is 13% more likely to have moved in the last year than a white person. In Baltimore, Phoenix, and Chicago, the figure is about 50%. The Twin Cities had the largest disparity at 103%; in other words, a black person in Minneapolis-St. Paul is twice as likely to have moved in the last year than a white person.

This is upsetting, but it’s not surprising. White Minnesotans are likely to own their homes, but black Minnesotans (Somali-Americans especially) are likely to rent their homes. People of color who did manage to buy a home were much more likely to be trapped in a predatory subprime loan, all financial details held constant. I’d say this all points to three things. First, we should relieve upward pressures on rent that force people to move. We can allow more people to live in attractive neighborhoods, and reduce displacement there, by encouraging dense development on vacantlots. Second, as we plan major public investments that are likely to increase property values and rents, we should proactively insure against displacement by building and buying affordable housing (maybe through community land trusts) while the property’s relatively cheap. Third, we should try to see “transience” neither as a person’s moral failing nor as a threat to property values, but instead as the failure of a system to provide stable, decent, and affordable housing.

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About Scott Shaffer

Scott Shaffer is a recent graduate of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, where he got a master's degree in urban and regional planning. He cares about data visualization and the intersection of land use and sustainable transportation. He and his wife live by East Lake Street in Minneapolis with their two Siamese cats.

4 Responses to Charting Residential Stability and Race

My family moved only once during my school-age years – we moved to a new city between third and fourth grade. I remember that being an upsetting experience – saying goodbye to old friends, a new school, a new house, trying to meet new friends.

Moving is a PITA for adults (as you describe) but a world-altering experience for kids.

I was surprised by the number of academic studies on moving and how it affects the outcomes of children. But it makes sense that instability is harmful for children, and especially children in poor households. If a family doesn’t have the resources (time, money, social and human capital) to maintain a stable residence, what are the chances they have the capacity to register a child for a new school and extra curricular activities? Or access social services? Or get involved in a neighborhood organization? Not very good.

Residential instability compounds the vulnerability of poor households. I’d like to hear more ideas about what we can do about it.

The disparities — also for Asian and Latino families — in Minneapolis/St. Paul are off the charts. I suspect that’s part of why our educational disparities are so persistent.

What I really want to understand are the real causes, all of them.

There’s more going on here than can be addressed building more (and more affordable) housing and investing in neighborhoods. We need bigger solutions to address these 35% worse than anywhere else disparities.